Someone please tell me the rest of the boss fights in this game aren't a matter of just building up the unity gauge and using chain attacks to open a 3 second window of vulnerability on the boss. Because that is going to get very irritating as it's not a very interesting mechanic in my book. It's incredibly fiddly and I think would've been a lot more interesting in a turn-based game where I can actually size up the battlefield a lot easier.

That's only happened one time so far for me (11 hours) but it was not fun.

I had one fight like that but I figured out I could also do a break topple combo attack. The boss fell down and my guys were able to use normal attacks to hurt him.

Honestly, the game mostly gets a meh from me. The combat system became interesting by the end, but the story and lore was so been-there-done-that it was painful. Like, every other JRPG ever, and they didn't stretch the formula at all. The world was too large and too MMO-ey for my taste, although I see how that could be to some people's liking. At least the combat stayed interesting throughout, especially if you constantly switched up your battle party and PC.

At any rate, here are some hints for those of you curious on how to take on high-level monsters. I didn't look at any FAQ or anything aside from referencing the spreadsheet occasionally to find exactly where an NPC is located, so these may not be optimal paths, but I found them quite effective in taking down everyone up to level 100 uniques.

On Chain Attacks:

The real goal here is to get a high combo bonus to deal incredible damage. There are several things the game doesn't really explain, one of the main ones being how the chain keeps going. I don't know exactly, but a couple characters have "likelihood of chain bonus increase" in their skill trees: I would highly recommend linking these skills with everyone (they seem to stack). Additionally, a higher tension (being on fire) and higher affinity between party members makes it more likely. I got a couple chains of 10-12 near the end of the game, for like 300k damage. Remember that to extend the chain, there's no bonus for hitting the circle exactly like there is for burst affinities. Just play it safe and make sure you land the button press inside the circle.

The key to chain attacks is an understanding of the color system. Each time you use the same color in a row, the bonus increases up to x5. It would seem like you'd need to load up your three party members' bars with, say, all red arts in order to make this effective, but what isn't well-explained is that the talent gauge actually acts as a wild card. So, you can run three reds in a row, then use a talent art for the fourth one both extending the combo to x4 and making the color white, which means that it's a fielder's choice for the next attack: go green or pink and it will still extend the combo. So you can have three reds, talent, three greens, talent, three pinks, talent, and you're up to a huge amount of damage without breaking the combo modifier. Big, big, big advantage.

Positioning your characters correctly is also a help when starting chain attacks (if you don't have Shulk directly behind the enemy when you start one, you're a jive sucker).

On taking down high-level enemies (6+ above party):

It seems really hard at first. There's an agility penalty for each level above you an enemy is, so if you fight someone eight levels above you (like in the Tephra Cave after the new paths open), you will basically never hit them. There is one exception, though: Melia. Her ether attacks seem to connect all the time, regardless of level. And herein lies the key. Set a tank: I liked Reyn in the end-game, because even high-level enemies didn't do much damage to him -- and since a high-level enemy gets an agility bonus, even Dunban won't be able to dodge many attacks. Better to have the damage sponge. Your second should be a healer: I liked Sharla here, since she could heal the most HP in a swath, and she had several status-effect clear arts which become very important at high levels (she could also mysteriously equip heavy armor by then, so that helped). Load up your tank with all the aggro-up gems you can get your hands on and you should be set.

Of course, even if you could just plink away at the mobs, Melia wouldn't be able to get the job done. The real key are her damage-over-time status effects. I put gems on her to get her up to Ether + 150, then found a Blaze Up VI (40% more blaze damage), an elec up, and I think even a chill up. These are all key. For her art spread, I had summon ice, summon earth, summon wind, summon elec, and summon blaze (summon aqua is completely useless once the party's HP creeps up). Four of these are very, very important: wind is more of a personal choice. Also chosen were burst end (important) and mind blast (very important). The eighth is fielder's choice. For trash mobs shadow stitch can be useful, as you can inflict a bunch of status effects, bind them, and cheese it, but most high-level enemies and all high-level uniques are immune. I personally went with Power Effect, so I could hang back a bit farther and still cover the team when dealing with enemies with big AoE attacks.

The idea here is to keep poison (summon earth), chill (summon ice), and blaze (summon fire) on the enemy(ies) at all times. This will melt their health astonishingly fast: at high levels I was getting 3500 HP/sec for blaze, 2000 through poison, and 1500 for ice. So 6000 HP per second melting away, far more than the whole party can do combined to the red-colored beasties. I pretty much just cycled through them constantly as they became available. Be sure to have at least two summoned for any potential chain attacks, so you can release them as a talent art.

The other important thing is to use Burst end and especially Mind Blast the second they become available. You never know when your next discharge might clear the talent gauge, so use them right away! Burst End is helpful because by dropping ether defense it will increase the damage your status effects inflict, but Mind Charge is the real winner here. I never saw the art seal not stick, and it lasts a while. If an enemy can only perform basic physical attacks on your tank, it's a golden opportunity to get everyone healed back up and resettled. All the big 13,000 damage attacks (with a HP limit of 9,999, natch) are arts of some sort. Block them, and things are much easier.

Anyway, I found this to be quite effective, and cleared out all of Tephra Cave at around level 88 or so, for the most part (level 96 mobs).

Hope that helps. Let me know if anyone wants answers to anything else; I'll do my best to answer.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

A giant Cthulu alien just threw the top of Big Ben at Abraham Lincoln's airship.

The key to chain attacks is an understanding of the color system. Each time you use the same color in a row, the bonus increases up to x5. It would seem like you'd need to load up your three party members' bars with, say, all red arts in order to make this effective, but what isn't well-explained is that the talent gauge actually acts as a wild card. So, you can run three reds in a row, then use a talent art for the fourth one both extending the combo to x4 and making the color white, which means that it's a fielder's choice for the next attack: go green or pink and it will still extend the combo. So you can have three reds, talent, three greens, talent, three pinks, talent, and you're up to a huge amount of damage without breaking the combo modifier. Big, big, big advantage.

Bold 1 I knew. Bold 2 I did not. That should help extending chains... if I ever take a Persona 3 break and get back to this.

So I'm way behind a lot of you, and am starting to believe I should go back and visit some old areas maybe, or at least Colony 9 so I can get more gems. But there is one thing that irritated me after Colony 6...

Spoiler:

You go through this huge swamp and then...oh, look, you gotta go through the huge swamp to grab 4 Macguffins. How nice. A senseless fetch quest just to pad on game length.

Remember how Final Fantasy 4's biggest issue was they had Kain betray you a second time, like beating a dead horse? Yeah, I miss those days.

You go through this huge swamp and then...oh, look, you gotta go through the huge swamp to grab 4 Macguffins. How nice. A senseless fetch quest just to pad on game length.

This game was mostly pretty kind in that if you had to fetch something, it would always be available. In the case you refer to, I'd already picked up three of the four in earlier exploration (the one I missed being the one I didn't have access to until I received that quest). So if you're thorough this sort of thing will be kept down to a minimum.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

A giant Cthulu alien just threw the top of Big Ben at Abraham Lincoln's airship.

Given the less-than-stellar reactions I'm seeing here, I'm seriously considering passing on this now to play something stellar instead. (In keeping with the pile-clearing concept of "I don't have to settle for GOOD games.") I could clear a lot of games off the pile in 60-100 hours. Somebody want to enable/disable me?

Given the less-than-stellar reactions I'm seeing here, I'm seriously considering passing on this now to play something stellar instead. (In keeping with the pile-clearing concept of "I don't have to settle for GOOD games.") I could clear a lot of games off the pile in 60-100 hours. Somebody want to enable/disable me?

Depends on what games you want to clear off the pile. It's a good game, by almost all accounts. If you've got GREAT games to play then it's hard to say don't do that. Truthfully though you shouldn't think in terms of numbers of games and just think about what you enjoy playing.

Given the less-than-stellar reactions I'm seeing here, I'm seriously considering passing on this now to play something stellar instead. (In keeping with the pile-clearing concept of "I don't have to settle for GOOD games.") I could clear a lot of games off the pile in 60-100 hours. Somebody want to enable/disable me?

Keep one thing in mind: other than myself and Minarchist, the praise for the game here has been pretty universal. I'm a clocker, so hate is what I do, and Minarchist poured 107 hours into the game, so he can't have disliked it all that much.

As to whether or not it'll personally appeal to you, how do you feel about MMOs? If MMO mechanics are your kind of thing, and if you don't mind what's a more or less pretty standard JRPG storyline, then you'd probably enjoy Xenoblade.

As to whether or not it'll personally appeal to you, how do you feel about MMOs? If MMO mechanics are your kind of thing, and if you don't mind what's a more or less pretty standard JRPG storyline, then you'd probably enjoy Xenoblade.

This is pretty good advice. I think the core lesson here is not to go in expecting some sort of transcendental revelation on how JRPGs should be done or what they're doing wrong*. It's a solid experience, but not a game-changer for the genre I think. At least that's my impression after 17 hours.

* I will say that I suspect some of the game design was informed by what's happening in the Western RPGs lately, but I don't have much experience with Western RPGs so take that with a grain of salt.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

It's just good to know that you're already thinking about your FFXV yaoi fanfic.

As to whether or not it'll personally appeal to you, how do you feel about MMOs? If MMO mechanics are your kind of thing, and if you don't mind what's a more or less pretty standard JRPG storyline, then you'd probably enjoy Xenoblade.

This is pretty good advice. I think the core lesson here is not to go in expecting some sort of transcendental revelation on how JRPGs should be done. It's a solid experience, but not a game-changer for the genre I think. At least that's my impression 17 hours in.

It's a game-changer for the genre if you're one of those people who think of Final Fantasy when they think of JRPGs. (So long as you don't think of Final Fantasy XII, I guess.)

As to whether or not it'll personally appeal to you, how do you feel about MMOs? If MMO mechanics are your kind of thing, and if you don't mind what's a more or less pretty standard JRPG storyline, then you'd probably enjoy Xenoblade.

This is pretty good advice. I think the core lesson here is not to go in expecting some sort of transcendental revelation on how JRPGs should be done. It's a solid experience, but not a game-changer for the genre I think. At least that's my impression 17 hours in.

It's a game-changer for the genre if you're one of those people who think of Final Fantasy when they think of JRPGs. (So long as you don't think of Final Fantasy XII, I guess.)

So basically people who thought Persona 3 was a game-changer for the genre?

EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it... "Game-changing" JRPG is probably code for "someone who isn't Square made a good JRPG"

ClockworkHouse wrote:

It's just good to know that you're already thinking about your FFXV yaoi fanfic.

As to whether or not it'll personally appeal to you, how do you feel about MMOs? If MMO mechanics are your kind of thing, and if you don't mind what's a more or less pretty standard JRPG storyline, then you'd probably enjoy Xenoblade.

This is pretty good advice. I think the core lesson here is not to go in expecting some sort of transcendental revelation on how JRPGs should be done. It's a solid experience, but not a game-changer for the genre I think. At least that's my impression 17 hours in.

It's a game-changer for the genre if you're one of those people who think of Final Fantasy when they think of JRPGs. (So long as you don't think of Final Fantasy XII, I guess.)

So basically people who thought Persona 3 was a game-changer for the genre?

EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it... "Game-changing" JRPG is probably code for "someone who isn't Square made a good JRPG"

So it seems the "cute" character is becoming a JRPG trope in itself. I liked Mog well enough, and the radish thing in Breath of Fire 3 was tolerable, but this is getting ridiculous.

"Becoming"?

I actually liked Riki a lot. I despised Mog with a white-hot hate, for what it's worth, and typically hate those characters, but Riki has more depth to him than what shows on the surface. You'll start to see it as you get to higher-level heart-to-hearts and the top-tier quests in Frontier Village.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

A giant Cthulu alien just threw the top of Big Ben at Abraham Lincoln's airship.

Mog has no dialog except the occasional Kupo! He just does a slam dance and BAM! damage dealt.

Well, depending on the location.

I tried to go back and do some older quest stuff for a bit, but the first Colony 6 mission was....well, they sent me after enemies that were my level, but somehow friggin' hard as Hell. I managed to get the first wave of enemies, but then another randomly popped up and I had to flee. So I decided screw that mission.

So yeah, I'm pretty much just going to beeline through the main quest, for the most part. Just left The Big Tree, level 34 and 20 hours in just about. I'd like to hope because I'm avoiding side quests I'm further than most would be at this point, but I have a feeling that's not the case.

I will confess the game is losing some of its steam, though that may be for a couple of reasons. In terms of The Big Tree...

Spoiler:

Climbing up the Nopon's tree to get to Melinia, then climbing down it, then having to grab Riki's equipment all felt like padding. Hell, a lot of "go back here and do this stuff" feels like padding. It could be worse, but I feel like I could have just moved on with it instead of forcing me to find one piece of armor and one weapon.

The world is huge, and in a lot of ways that is awesome. But in others...man, sometimes it's nice for point A to point B to be a five minute walk.

Or maybe this is that 20 burn that Clocky mentions so often, which doesn't seem as applicable as I don't get to play Xenoblade that often or regularly. For now, I'll just chalk it up to my previous two play sessions breaking away from what feels like the main plot so I can get two new characters that, thus far, I'm pretty "meh" to.

I'm about to give this a second chance in the near future. I got some flak (hi, ccesarano! ;)) for having abandoned it too early last time. So you guys tell me: what's a good point to have reached in the game where I can definitely say I've given it an honest chance and if I don't love it by now then I will never, ever, ever, ever love it?

I'm about to give this a second chance in the near future. I got some flak (hi, ccesarano! ;)) for having abandoned it too early last time. So you guys tell me: what's a good point to have reached in the game where I can definitely say I've given it an honest chance and if I don't love it by now then I will never, ever, ever, ever love it?

First named Mecha boss which is around the 10-15 hour mark I think. Once you clear that you'll hit an obvious "take a break" point. Like plot beat, fade to black, save prompt. That was where I put the game down and decided to come back to it later (November->February looks like a nice time for me right now). After that much time you should have a good idea of the systems for the game and I think a party of 3 or 4 characters.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

It's just good to know that you're already thinking about your FFXV yaoi fanfic.